The Earliest Avar-Age Stirrups, Or The "Stirrup Controversy" Revisited

Abstract

It is now over forty years since the beginning of the "stirrup controversy. " In his major work published in 1962, Lynn White dedicated an entire chapter to the "stirrup, [the] mounted shock combat, feudalism, and chivalry. " 1 White painted a picture of dramatic social change in Western Europe triggered by the introduction of the stirrup in the late eighth century, which to a large extent was credited for critical developments in warfare: "Th e Man on Horseback, as we have known him during the past millennium, was made possible by the stirrup, which joined man and steed into a fi ghting organism. " 2 White defi ned mounted shock combat as the tactic by which horsemen charged with couched lances kept under the arm. 3 As a consequence, mounted shock combat required a considerable amount of training, which began at a very early age. As the catalyst that made both mounted shock combat and feudalism possible, the stirrup fi rst appeared in Persia, then was carried to other countries in the Near and Middle East, as well as to Byzantium, by Muslim conquerors. From Byzantium, the stirrup then reached the Franks in Western Europe no earlier than 700. Although he knew that the earliest Byzantine indication of the stirrup was that of the Strategikon, White chose to date that military treatise unusually late. 4 He may have done so in reaction to the idea that the Byzantine army had adopted the stirrup from the Avars. According to him, "the widespread belief that the Avars of the late sixth century had stirrups" was based only on the authority of József Hampel, the author of the fi rst synthesis of Avar archaeology: "Th e belief fathered by Hampel in sixth-century Avar stirrups seems

On the Roman-Byzantine adoption of the stirrup once more: a new find from seventh-century Aphrodisias

“…Further research, drawing on both textual and archaeological evidence, has also now made it clear that the advent of the stirrup in Europe was considerably earlier than White proposed. In particular, Florin Curta's recent contributions highlight and restate the long-recognised fact that stirrup technology was known to the Avars in the late sixth or early seventh century (Curta 2007;2013); it is now widely, though not universally, accepted that the Roman-Byzantine military adopted the stirrup from the Avars, following the settlement of the latter in the Carpathian basin in the second half of the sixth century.…”